The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-08-08

A THOROUGHLY BAD PARTY,

A THOROUGHLY BAD PARTY.
A man of confirmed bad character, bad rep
utation, bad principles, bad practices and bad
| habits had better be dead. He is certainly no
| good in this world, and probably not in the
next. The longer he lives the more harm he
does and the worse he gets Much the same
rule applies TO political parties. A political
party is an entity. Like an individual it has
its character and its principles, good or bad,
its ruling ideas and controlling influences, its
methods, practices and habits, its prevailing
tendency toward good or evil. The Demo
cratic party of to-day is an example of thor
oughly vicious political organizations party
of bad principles, bad methods, bad habits,
bad tendencies, bad works. This seems to be
the law of its being. Not that there are no
good men in the Democratic party, for there
is fair minority of such. No person is so
bad that there is not some good in him-some
feeling or principle which, if given play and
allowed to assert itself, might become
deeming virtue. So no party can be SO thor
oughly bad that some honest man may not be
found in it. But, As in the case of the indi-
vidual, the feeble germ and weak principle of
virtue is overcome and silenced by the
more powerful and active principle of
evil, SO in the Democratic party the
influence, voice and votes of the few honest
men are overcome and silenced by those of the
great army of the opposite kind. party,
like an individual must be judged by its pre-
dominant tendencies. 1t is what the majority
makes it. Judged by this rule the Demo
cratic party of to-day is thoroughly bad, a
political malformation, an ulcer on the BODY
polite, a perpetual menace to the peace and
welfare OF the country. To all practical in
tents it is nothing but an organized principle
of evil, an incarnate tendency to wrong, the
embodiment of political malpractice. Under
any circumstances conditions it represents
ninety-nine parts of evil in a possible one
hundred Whatever of mischief, disaster,
deviltry, disgrace, fraud or corruption exists
or can be brought into existence under a
popular form of government finds its natural
home and harbor, its advocate and defender
in the Democratic party. There is no form
OF pOlllcAl outrage IuaI IL LAS uOC pTdC-
ticed, no law for the security of
the ballot that it has not violated,
no method of political fraud that it has not
incorporated in its code. Time and again, in
hundreds of instances, in the North as we'll as
in the South, it has used fraud and corruption,
force and violence to debauch the ballot,
nullify free suffrage and overcome the will of
the people. From the shotgun, the revolver
and the midnight raider in the South to the
ballot-box suffer, the tally-sheet forger, the
pocketknife eraser and erosive acid in the
North, it has boxed the entire compass of
crime and swung completely round the circle
of felonies. Nor has it been satisfied with
once traversing this orbit of infamy; it has
revolved in it year after year and followed the
track of lawlsssness and crime with a regu-
larity that can be predicted. Every presi-
dental election has completed new cycle
of Democratic fraud in the South and inter
mediate years have been improved to practice
in the North such methods of fraud
as ingenious Democrats still unconined
in penitentiaries delight to invent OF these
multitudinous outrages, crimes and frauds, |
not one has ever been repudiated or con-
demned by the party managers press.
Each new infamy has been promptly incor- |
porated in the Democratic code, and every |
discovery of a new method of fraud hailed |
with delight by the connoisseurs in crime who |
manage its affairs. The honest men in the |
party are as powerless to shape its course as |
country preacher would be in congress of |
thieves or college tutor in a convention of |
garrotere. If they attempt to protest against
the commission Of crime in the name of De- |
mocracy. they are treated as an officer Of the |
law might be who attempted to read writ |
under an fish woman's window - deluged :
viduals may protest, the party organization
digests fraud and assimilates crime with a
readiness that bespeaks wonderful affinity |
for moral filth. From the so-called Senator
boss whose bosom blazes with a diamond OBJ
tanned in a dicker with thief one-half of
the party managers ready to condone the
crimes the other half commit From such a
evil That seems to be the law of its nature.
The duty of all honest men is to watch it and
fight it.
IT is possible the McGarigle case may lead
to much-needed reform of the extraditiou
laws between the United States and Canada.